CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait  Army investigators questioned a Muslim American soldier Sunday in connection with the grenade attack on a tented command area that killed one serviceman and wounded 15.

In this TV image, soldiers from a 101st Airborne Division carry one of those injured in a grenade attack at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait.

AP via CBS

Army spokesmen confirmed that Sgt. Hasan Akbar, 31, of Fort Campbell, Ky, was taken into custody shortly after the assault, which occurred about 1:30 a.m. Kuwait time (5:30 p.m. ET Saturday) at the northern Kuwait base of the 101st Airborne Division about 20 miles from the Iraq border.

Akbar was an engineer attached to 22,000-member division, part of which has already entered Iraq. He has not been charged. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Army could seek the death penalty for Akbar for murder, treason or both, said John Kunich, military justice specialist at Roger Williams law school in Bristol, R.I. He would be tried by a court-martial.

Army spokesman Max Blumenfeld suggested Akbar's motive was "most likely resentment." At Fort Campbell, Army spokesman George Heath said Akbar had been having "what some might call an attitude problem."

A military source said investigators were exploring whether Akbar's religious beliefs played a role in the attack. A second military source told Reuters news service that Akbar opposed the war against predominantly Muslim Iraq.

The attack caused chaos at the headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Brigade. A single fragmentation grenade was tossed into each of three tents occupied mostly by brigade officers, some of whom were asleep. Capt. Christopher Seifert, 27, died at the scene. His hometown was not given. At least three of the 15 wounded were seriously hurt.

Akbar, who soldiers said had been on guard duty at the time, was captured within minutes of the attack. Military authorities said he was found hiding in a bunker and surrendered without a struggle. They believe he acted alone.

In Baton Rouge, Akbar's mother, Quran Bilal, said she doubted her son carried out the attack. She said she believed Akbar had been accused solely because he is Muslim.

"He wouldn't try to take nobody's life. He's not like that," Bilal said. "He said the only thing he was going out there to do was to blow up the bridges."

She said Akbar was born Mark Fidel Kools, but that he changed his name after she married a Muslim while her son was a boy. Public records show that he used both names as an adult.

Akbar's neighbors in a brick apartment building near Fort Campbell described him as a loner who rarely came outside except when coming or going to work. "He just stayed to himself all the time. He was a real quiet dude," Mike Jones said. He said that Akbar, whom other neighbors said drove a red pick-up truck, had discussed going to the war in Iraq. "He said he wasn't afraid to go. He knew it was his job. That's what he was supposed to do," Jones said.

The incident awakened echoes of the late stages of the Vietnam War, when the American military recorded 82 deaths and 651 injuries caused by fratricide from 1969 through mid-1971.

Only a handful of fragging suspects were ever caught and prosecuted, said George Lepre, a graduate student at Drew University in Madison, N.J., who is writing a doctoral thesis on the subject. None was sentenced to death, he said.

The military has not executed a soldier for a war-related offense since a World War II deserter, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, was shot in January 1945.

Jamal Baadani, a Marine gunnery sergeant who heads the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in the Military, called the attack a "sad tragedy to us all as Americans."

"We don't believe the actions are justified by the (Muslim) religion or the Koran," said Baadani, a Muslim.

The group estimates that about 3,500 of the 1.4 million troops serving in the U.S. armed forces are Arab Americans, many of them Muslim.

Komarow reported from Kuwait, Willing from Washington and Copeland from Ft. Campbell, Ky. Contributing: Chantal Escoto of The Clarksville (Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle; Ian Demsky and Leon Alligood of The (Nashville) Tennessean.